


All Four of Us

by iwant2beelieve



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: ??? i think that's all the important info?, Alternate Universe - College/University, Multi, Polyamory, Trans Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), fluff I suppose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 08:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11643162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwant2beelieve/pseuds/iwant2beelieve
Summary: Convincing Hanji to sleep rather than work on her project brings a huge relationship misunderstanding to light.





	All Four of Us

**Author's Note:**

> So. Important to note: this essentially takes place within a larger college au I'm working on, and also I totally wrote this for an english final so it ended up being a sort of stand alone. It's kinda sparse and awkward because of the 'it's my final' thing but I was honestly too lazy to rewrite the weird parts so...here it is anyway!

“Hello? Hanji?” Levi sighed angrily and smacked his fork on the metal table. “You dragged me all the way out here for lunch and you fell asleep as soon as we got here!”

Hanji picked up her head and groaned, “I’m sorry could you repeat that last part?” She blindly grabbed a spoon from her tray and started trying to write notes into her hashbrowns.

“Hanji!” Levi snatched the spoon away and grabbed Hanji’s shoulders, shaking her until her eyes were actually open.

“Ah, yes,” Hanji screeched, brushing Levi away from her, “I know what to do now, but I’m gonna need a heck of a lot of lizards!”

“Well, good morning to you too.”

Levi watched Hanji stand and pace around the table a few times. He knew she was busy with her huge thesis or whatever it was she called it, but she must have had some time to sleep. It wasn’t abnormal for her to put off sleep in favor of something more “fun” but she hadn’t looked this bad since probably her first year of college. Ok, maybe that was an exaggeration, but she did look pretty bad.

Levi had met Hanji during his second year of undergrad studies. Levi being the top of his class, and ahead of schedule for his law degree, was awarded a tutor-like position for student legal services on campus. Hanji was a first year biology student at the time, advised to seek advice after turning in a particularly troubling homework assignment. She came in for a scheduled appointment wearing boyfriend jeans, rips all over, and a tattered grey tanktop reading ‘I’ve had my morning coffee but still please don’t talk to me.’ Levi highly doubted she had brushed her hair that morning either. He looked her over and said nothing as she handed him the assignment in question. It was something that looked to be straight out of a middle school science class: a worksheet for the scientific method where you wrote in your own experiment. The issue was what she had written; her proposed experiments all involved human subjects in what would be relatively traumatizing situations. After about twenty minutes of trying to explain why it was unethical to experiment directly on humans the way she had proposed, Hanji complained that ethics were too complicated. Levi assured her it wasn’t that difficult, and from then on she insisted on seeing him before proposing any other experiments to her professors or her board, rather than learning the law herself. Levi never completely understood her himself but she had chosen him as a friend and she turned out to be lively company, if not enjoyable.

  
Still, in the almost seven years of knowing each other, Levi had never seen Hanji’s eye circles look so dark.  
“Hey, Hanji,” Levi started, “how free are you this evening?”

Hanji pulled her hand from her chin and stopped her pacing to give Levi a look.  
“This is weird. Why are you the one making plans? You hate doing that.”

Levi shrugged, “Dunno, just trying to shake it up I guess.”

Hanji squinted and locked eyes with him while sitting back down.  
“I’m free. What’s your plan?”

“Mm…meet me at my apartment around five.”

“Ok, sure, but what’s the plan?”

“That’s the plan. Meet me there.”

“Uhh, ok I guess. See you later.”

“You’re not going to finish your brunch?”

“No, dude, I got a whole lab report to finish before noon.”

“You realize it’s eleven, right?”

“Yeah, hence my congé.”

  
Levi shook his head disapprovingly as Hanji left. The table looked like an infant had been sitting there refusing to eat thanks to Hanji’s nap. However, the whole process of clearing the table was quite relaxing, so he decided he’d let it slide.  
What wasn’t so great was that Levi had to trek out of the place. He had given Hanji grief about the location she chose for lunch or, in her case, brunch. He never ended up on this side of campus unless she was dragging him out there. Now he’d have to walk about thirty minutes to get anywhere useful.

“Cool,” Levi whispered to himself, unsure where he wanted to go. Either he was going to see Mike or he was going to the gym. After walking in the general direction of the gym for a few minutes, he changed his trajectory and decided it’d be best to give Mike a heads up.

* * *

  
Once Levi got to the campus health center he found himself behind a gigantic roadblock.  
“Hey you,” Erwin boomed. “What are you here for?"

Levi sighed and looked up at the giant dork. Erwin was another friend he met through his major. Since Erwin was an international relations major, he often found himself in the law building, looking through things. Levi happened to be a wonderful resource who also found himself drawn toward the duality of Erwin. One second he’s standing straight in fresh-pressed business clothes talking about duty and justice and the next he’s singing and dancing to Shakira during a study break in full costume. It was amusing and confusing to him, never mind that he swore Erwin sought him out on purpose for no reason a lot of the time. Well, that wasn’t completely true. It wasn’t exactly a secret that Erwin had a huge crush on Levi, but the latter could never figure out why; he just rolled with it since Erwin seemed to be a nice enough guy….and a pretty enough guy.

Levi brushed some hair out of his face and answered, “I’m looking for the boy.”

“Ah,” Erwin said, confused. “Aaaaah,” he continued, finally understanding what Levi meant. “I was just with Mike; he’s not busy.”

“Why did you need to see Mike?”

“I didn’t. He just texted me that he was bored so I came in pretending to have pulled a muscle.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t worry, he _nursed_ me back to health! Get it? Because he’s a nurse?”

“You didn’t see me cringe? Yes, I got it.”

Erwin slapped Levi’s shoulder and walked out of the building, laughing at his own joke. His awful sense of humor was endearing sometimes, insufferable most times.

“Ah, I thought I heard something terrible happen out here.”

“Oh, hi Mike. It was just Erwin.”

“Go figure,” Mike muttered. “Anyway, what brings you here? You’re not due for another shot for another few days.”

“Yeah I kn-“

“Hey, how long have you been wearing your binder today?”

“Only a few hours this morning. But I wanted to ask-“

“You weren’t gonna try to run another marathon in it, right?”

“For the last time, I was running late and just needed to get to work. Can I just-“ Levi paused himself this time, looking at Mike’s face. Mike knew Levi was bad about giving his body a break and he just wouldn’t let it lie. “I’ll take it off when I get home,” Levi sighed.

“Good. Now what’s that you’ve been trying to say?”

Levi huffed and rolled his eyes. “I need you to come to my apartment after work.”

“Goootcha,” Mike replied, complete with a wink and finger guns.

“No! Oh my god, it’s for Hanji!”

Mike paused before continuing, “Weird, but I’m not opposed to it straight off the bat.”

Levi put his hands over his face muffling his frustrated swears.

“No, I mean she needs medical help. Sort of.”

“Oh! Oh no, is she alright?” Mike asked, pulling himself out of the gutter.

“She just hasn’t been sleeping. She’s honestly been at least four days without any real sleep; I’ve never seen her look more worse for wear. I figure if you can just assess the damage,” he rubbed at the bridge of his nose, “I’m sure she’ll be more receptive if a medical professional hounds her about it. I mean, it works for me anyway.”

“You’ve never been the kind to care about others,” Mike stated, speculatively.

“It’s bad, Mike.”

“Okay, if you say so. After work you need me there?”

“Yeah, Hanji’s coming at five.” 

“’Kay. See you then.” Mike theatrically blew Levi a kiss, then walked back toward his office.

Levi shielded his face on the way out, pretending that didn’t just happen in public. He was good friends with Mike after seeking him out for a hormone prescription. Yes, they had hooked up a few times, but Levi would rather pretend they didn’t. He was fairly sure that was some sort of wrongdoing in the nurse code of conduct or something. Besides, if it ever went south he would have no primary care doctor. While Mike was currently working, and studying, as a nurse on campus, he had already actually graduated medical school and completed his residency. He was a licensed general practitioner, but he decided he’d rather be a nurse. It was something about formality versus actually helping people. Apparently the nurses he interned with convinced him he’d be better suited for it and he listened. This made him a few years older than everyone else, but no cared about that. Mike was incredibly agreeable, caring and optimistic; everyone loved to be around him.

 

Levi tried to shake the awkwardness of the possible relationship out of his head while he headed for home. Undoubtedly, some tomfoolery would be happening in the halls to make him angry enough to forget the whole thing for a while. Being a resident assistant for freshmen usually had that effect. Levi had been stuck with a particularly unruly hall this semester, too. There were two boys who always got into fights that lived across from each other, two engineering students who juiced up nerf guns and had guerilla fights throughout the halls unannounced, a couple gym buffs who liked to hang around and practice fighting techniques on lounge furniture, and a migrating botany student who just kept bringing plants into the building and leaving them around, remaining unseen . Those were the most common offenders, anyway.

“Oh, Levi, good,” one of the freshmen began as soon as the door had opened, “you need to settle something for us.”

“It starts,” Levi breathed. “What do you want?”

“Ok well, he said that if you touch his door that’s a breach of personal space but I think that as long as I’m not defacing it there’s no penalty.”

“Good lord, kid. What are you doing standing in front of his door with your hand on it? Just stay away from each other or kiss and make up, jeez.”

“But he said he’ll excommunicate me.”

“From what? The teenage angst commune? Fat chance. You sound like you don’t even know what excommunicate means…and he probably doesn’t either,” Levi mumbled. “In any case, it sounds like a _you_ problem. I’m not about to get involved with ‘he said’s and cootie wars.” He put up his hand, signaling the end of the conversation, and went into his room. He locked the door behind him and threw himself onto his bed. A nap sounded like a good idea.

* * *

 

“Knocky knocky, please unlocky!”

Levi peeled himself from his mattress, listening and hoping that whoever said that wasn’t at his door. After hearing an actual knock he determined, much to his dismay, it was in fact his door.

“Hello,” he said flatly, opening the door only a crack.

“It is I, your lovable friend Hanji,” she began to speak softer and faster, “now please let me in; the kids are weirding me out.”

Letting her in, he asked, “They’re weirding you out?”

“They’re, uh, sitting in the hall with maps and compasses,” Hanji bowled her way inside, bringing an extremely large tote, “the blonde one is talking about Venus and an azimuth outside the building in some trees or something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Apparently it’s some astronomy thing and it’s relatively rare; I guess there’s some place called a zenith too he’s trying to figure out how to see Venus with the azimuth in between the trees,” Hanji waved her hands as she spoke, chalking all this up to be nothing worth caring about. “They’re all nerds anyhow.” She set her bag on Levi’s desk and began taking out lab supplies.

“They’re all nerds anyhow,” Levi mocked, watching Hanji lay out her equipment over his textbooks. “Wait, no, please tell me that isn’t-“

“What? My lizards? You can’t make data from supplies without doing the work, you know.”

“You actually got lizards?”

“Oh yeah, I’ve been working with them since I finished that lab report.”

“Is…that one dead?”

“Been dead. I was dissecting it until I remembered I said I’d come here.”

“Do not dissect lizards on my desk!” Levi was going to argue until he heard more knocking at his door. “I swear if this about the door cooties…”

“As a doctor I can say that cooties, in the widely understood sense, aren’t real,” Mike said through the door.

“Oh! Mike is here too; what a surprise!” Hanji chimed gleefully.

Levi opened the door to reveal Mike, who evidently brought Erwin with him.

“The whole gang is here,” Levi corrected. He hadn’t planned on Erwin coming. If he did maybe he’d have cleaned instead of slept.

“Sorry to be a bother,” Erwin pulled a packet of index cards from his coat pocket and sat at the edge of Levi’s bed, “but I just need a study buddy to read me these flashcards. Mike told me he was coming here so I’m enlisting whoever isn’t currently busy instead of texting you all separately.”

Hanji started to laugh, “Please, text us anyway.”

“Do not,” Levi added.

Mike leaned against the desk and turned toward Levi, “Hey, do you keep those kids out there incommunicado or something?”

“What? No?” 

“They’re just not talking. They are literally silent out there. Two of them are staring at each other, a third one is on the floor with a map, and there’s a fourth one sitting with a mint plant, I think.”

“Those two idiots are still fighting? I honestly shouldn’t be surprised,” Levi walked toward his door to look through the peephole. “No one was punching anyone else, though?”

“Not that I saw.”

“Okay, good. I don’t need to get involved.”

“So,” Erwin interjected, tapping his deck of flashcards against his palm “who’s the least busy?”

“Probably me, but Mike and I need to talk to Hanji first,” Levi responded.

“Is it about the lizards? Listen, I had to bring them here.”

“N-“

“I was told when I brought them into the lab that one of the snakes escaped a few days ago and ate some of the mice. I thought it would be safest if I took them with me! I’m not letting them get eaten after putting so much work into them.”

“You’ve had them for one day.”

“I still worked on them! Besides, we usually share our space with the veterinary science kids and it gets kinda stuffy. Some girl is keeping her family’s falcon there in this weird little cage because it’s molting everywhere; I don’t want it squawking at or shedding on my lizards!”

“That would be a mew, which holds _hawks_ while they molt.”

“Ok, well excuuuuse me, Mr. Fancy,” huffed Hanji. “My point stands. I don’t want my cute little lizards next to a big old predatory bird!”

“Cute being subjective,” Erwin added.

“I love my lizards! They’re like my own little remuda; whichever one I pick next gets the fun juice,” she said as she lifted a tiny syringe in front of the lizards’ box.

“N-no, Hanji,” Levi sputtered, “don’t talk like that. That’s the kind of talk that will get you a lawsuit.”

“What? It’s only a vaccine.” She paused, “probably.”

Levi sighed, then remembered why his desk was covered in lizard guts to begin with.” Hey, Mike. Wanna check out Hanji and tell me how not okay she is right now?”

“Uhh, not really. She’s got lizard guts she could fling at me in protest.”

At this, Hanji turned in her seat and sent a sinister smile in Mike’s direction.

“Really?” Levi glowered at Mike and yanked the chair, and Hanji with it, away from the table. “There. No guts.” Mike thanked Levi and started examining Hanji. “Ok, now I can help you with your flashcards, Erwin.”

“Thanks. Most of it is just certain alliances and areas where a set of laws are in effect; it’s just review. I wouldn’t be surprised if you know most of it.”

“Why would I know your classwork?”

“Remember last week when I came to you with the map and had you quiz me on alliances throughout history?”

“Yeah, you said your test was the next day.” He looked at Erwin and lost his train of thought. “Did you pass?” Levi asked dumbly, obviously staring.

Erwin, oblivious to the charm he seemed to be working was offended by the question, but decided to ignore it anyway. “Wh-Yes, of course, I passed! The class has a cumulative final though so I want to study this a little bit every so often. Besides, my professor said he might make extra credit questions from past chapters, and I do have a test tomorrow.”

“You made all these flashcards….for review? What about the new stuff on the test?”

“You can never be too careful,” Erwin affirmed with a smile. “I read ahead and learned it a month ago.”

Levi shook his head, shrugged, and ran through the flashcards with Erwin anyway; he answered every single one correctly, but insisted they go through the deck at least one more time. About halfway through Mike announced that Hanji was seriously sleep deprived and that he would write notes to her lab advisors and professors so she could skip class, if she didn’t have enough time to sleep in tomorrow. Hanji insisted that wouldn’t be necessary; she promised she’d be in bed by midnight.

“But will you be able to sleep then? Do you suffer from insomnia?”

“She has been unable to sleep before,” Levi stated.

“He was asking me, not you!” She seemed more embarrassed that he answered than anything else.

“You would have lied.”

“You don’t know how I sleep,” Hanji protested, hoping Levi would get the hint. She didn’t really want to mention that they too had slept together, fearing it would shake up the friend group dynamic too much. She loved Mike and Erwin both too much for that to happen.

“Don’t worry about it Hanji. Levi snores; that’s way more awkward.” Erwin’s addition was met with two confused looks and one deeply offended Levi.

“Okay,” Levi huffed, “enough about sleeping habits, more about convincing Hanji to take a fucking nap.”

Hanji grumbled audibly about not needing monitoring because was a full-grown adult, but Mike shut that down by telling her she clearly couldn’t care for herself without help. His head lifted and snapped in Levi’ direction.

“You never took your binder off!”

Levi winced, “I’m sorry, I fell asleep and forgot. Sorry.” He began removed his shirt, slid the binder off and put his shirt back on.

“I just…I’d rather you reduce the risk of hurting your lungs, if it’s an option…”

Levi exhaled loudly and continued reading Erwin’s flashcards.

“Levi, could you shuffle the cards again? I fear I’ve memorized the order.”

“Shuffling cards,” Levi announced unenthusiastically. “So, Hanji, what are you actually doing with these lizards you intend to gut all over my books?”

“Not all of them, you monster!” She scooted her chair away from Mike and back toward the desk. “I’m trying to make my lizards immune to a certain virus.”

“Why lizards?”

“I just think they’re neat,” Hanji beamed, petting one of them with her index finger after letting out a long yawn. “The important part isn’t which…thing..they’re immune to it’s mutation,” she yawned again, “how…I’m…I’ve got some amoebas…we’re just gonna…osmosis a membrane…”

“Yeah?” Levi asked, fully aware that she could no longer explain her proposal. He wasn’t sure what it was she mutating or what she was doing with it, but he wasn’t gonna get a better answer out of her for a while, he supposed.

“I wanna,” Hanji yawned again, only managing to make strange mewing noises afterward.

“Uh huh,” Levi rolled his eyes and turned back toward Erwin. “You don’t really need to go through these again, do you?”

“Maybe just one last time,” Erwin smiled then looked past Levi. “Hanji, you really should go to sleep. You can work on that later.”

“No,” she replied, “if I sleep now I won’t be able to sleep when it’s actually time to sleep.”

“We should get some alcohol,” Erwin suggested. “That always knocks me out. Plus, it’s way more fun than anything any of us are doing right now.”

Levi let out a snort. “I like being blasted to shit as much as the next guy, but you know as well as I do that you and alcohol cannot, and should not, mix.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?!”

“It means that you do really weird things when you’re drunk,” Mike added gently. “The last time you drank, you ended up kicking in a door in the history building wearing thigh-highs trying to give a lecture debunking common myths about communism.”

“Hey, those were nice boots!” Erwin rebutted.

“He does really weird things sober, too.” Hanji croaked, still half asleep. “The other day he stopped by one of those College 101 lectures he likes to teach and he started talking about international law in relation to some god Mithras because it was about friendship and balance or something…”

  
“What? No, Mithras is a Persian god equated to the sun. Mitra, is maybe what you meant,” Levi explained, pointlessly, “but even that makes some sort of sense because in both law and politics you need to maintain some sort of equilibrium and present yourself in a welcoming understanding manner in order to get anywhere at all. The communism myths in high heeled leather boots I’m not sure I see the value in.” He paused and frowned at himself. “I don’t even know why I know that…must be spending too much time around that Armin kid.”

“Well, at least I’m fun when I’m drunk!” Erwin argued. “You just get angry!”

“On the contrary,” Hanji chuckled, “I find him quite munificent.”

Erwin looked to her, expectant of a reason. Levi cocked his head wondering why she would say such a thing; he felt like he was missing something here.

“He danced, sang, and slept with me. I guess he only gets angry at you.” Hanji shrugged and put her head in her hands before realizing what she had just admitted to.

Levi held up a finger and opened his mouth, decided he had nothing to say in defense of himself, then lowered his hand and closed his mouth.

“Wait a minute, why didn’t I know that?” Erwin asked. “I thought we were dating.”

“Who? You and Mike?” Levi pointed between the two while asking.

“No,” Erwin answered. “Aren’t you two dating?”

“Me and Hanji?” Levi asked again.

“Wait, I thought you and Levi were dating,” Hanji unhelpfully added.

All four of them stopped for a minute and just looked around at each other. There is no way that conversation should have gotten so confused unless they had all been involved with each other at some point without the others knowing.

“Well, this is awkward,” Mike chuckled. “I thought we were dating, like all of us together.”  
His comment earned a confused squint from the other three.  
“I always felt like something was amiss since we never seemed to acknowledge our relationship…I thought maybe you guys didn’t like labels or something? I honestly assumed since we all kinda work here you tried to hide it from the public and that's why we never mentioned it formally but…I guess I was wrong.” Mike was the only one smiling.

“Wait…how can we…date each other…all. I’m confused and tired; someone help me,” Hanji complained.

“Well, everyone here has some sort of feelings for everyone else, right?”

There was a quiet mutter of agreement.

“Ok, so we all have mutual feelings for each other…why not have a multi-person relationship?”

“Can…we do that?” Erwin asked to no one in particular.

Mike shrugged, “Yeah, I just finished communing with the gods and they said it’s legal.”

“I just didn’t know it was a thing….that people did,” Erwin said in defense of himself.

“Well mainstream media certainly wouldn’t have you believe it,” Mike grumbled.

“So, this is a thing.” Levi declared. “We’re in a relationship now, all four of us.”

“Unless anyone’s opposed.” Mike added.

They all glanced at each other shaking their heads, then slowly they all began to nod. They had known each other for years, been involved with each other on more than one occasion, and finally now they were addressing it.

“Neat,” Hanji cheered. “If we can all fit in that bed I’m gonna have the best sleep of my entire life.” She glanced back at the desk where she left her lab materials. “I promise, Levi, I will remunerate the cost of any book that may permanently smell of formaldehyde, but I’m not walking all the way back to the lab to put my stuff away.”

“Tch, fine. I’ll let it slide.”

“You’re the best!” Hanji crawled into Levi’ bed and pulled the blankets up around her. “Hey, Levi, could you inform me about the emigration laws in place in this region.”

“What region is that? Erwin probably kn--”

“Your room.”

Levi sighed and covered his face. “I think you’re attempting to make a joke and I appreciate it but I’d rather you just be in my bed and…sleep. You need it.”

  
She smiled and made a vague motion implying she wanted everyone to join her for early bedtime. Mike gave Erwin and Levi a look, afraid that the bed wouldn’t hold four people, but got only a shrug in response. If they break the bed, they break it together.

**Author's Note:**

> I love these four v much and they will have a part in the larger au, granted that goes well. If y'all wanna see more of just these four though I'd be happy to do that too:) ty for reading and have a nice day!


End file.
